267 



gen de los Indios*, is a proof of this. The po- 

 sition of the possessive and personal pronouns 

 at the end of the noun and the verb, as well 

 as the numerous tenses of the latter, characte- 

 rize the Hebrew, and the other Semitic lan- 

 guages. The minds of some of the mission- 

 aries have been struck at finding the same 

 gradations in the American tongues. They 

 were ignorant, that the analogy of several scat- 

 tered features does not prove, that languages 

 belong to the same stock . 



It appears less astonishing, that men, who 

 are well acquainted with only two languages 

 extremely heterogeneous, the Castilian and the 

 Biscayan, should have found in the latter a 

 family likeness with the American languages. 

 The composition of words, the facility with 

 which the partial elements are detected, the 

 forms of the verb, and the different modifica- 

 tions which it undergoes according to the na- 

 ture of the object, may have caused and kept 

 up this illusion. But we repeat, an equal ten- 

 dency toward aggregation or incorporation does 

 not constitute an identity of origin. The fol- 

 lowing are examples of these relations of physi- 

 ognomy between the American and Biscayan 

 languages ; between idioms which differ en- 

 tirely in their roots. 



* Libro iii, Cap. 7, §3. 



